So, Can They Play with the Big Dogs?

(April 2020)

I decide to spend opening day at Nagoya, watching Shin Seiki host the Neo-Tokyo Akria for several reasons. First, because I’m growing to like Nagoya, and because I have yet to see the Akira. Beyond that, I truly need a break from DK, who is chatting all the time now about Edo this and Edo that and if they would just send the Evas to Cuba everyone would be happy. Then he starts into his japanese and I’m lost. In addition, Ichihara has been absent the past few days, or nearly so, anyway. He’s had meetings and reviews and a session with the NPA themselves, which I take to mean that someone upstairs wants to see some progress. It’s hard to watch someone care this much, and work this hard, and know they’re probably a bad day away from losing their job.

And to know that if they lose their job, that may well destroy them.

But I still note that I have not seen him smoking in the very few moments I’ve had with him. And, to be honest, he seems to be walking with more pep to his step.

I remain optimistic there.

And finally, now that the dross of spring has been sifted, I’m intrigued to get a real feel for the answer to one of the burning questions the world has been asking ever since news of the merger was leaking: Can the guys in Japan play with the big dogs?

Between Neo-Tokyo and Shin Seiki you’ve got three fairly recent LRS championships on the field. How best to tell, eh?

So, it’s off to Nagoya once again.for a game where the first pitch will be thrown at 7:05.

Since I’ve seen the Evas play, I spend my time on the rails reading up on the Akira.

Despite the small-town flavor of Japanese baseball to the rest of the world, the League of the Rising Sun is no complete stranger to the influx of money. Like most things in Japanese culture, it has a deeply capitalistic slant, and pretty much everything within it is for sale. The next example I run into is the fact that the championship trophy the League of the Rising Sun plays for it is named the Neo-Tokyo Cup. This is because the group that owns the Neo-Tokyo Akira, arguably the league’s central team, also bought naming rights to the cup. This made for the deliciously recursive seasons of 2012 and 2017 where the Neo-Tokyo Akira pulled off the feat of winning the Neo-Tokyo cup.

If they are going to achieve this again, they will have to first get out of the Silver Sword Group, which means they need to take down the behemoth in Shin Seiki and manage to slip past the Niihama-shi ghosts. Kawaguchi also plays in the SSG, but seriously, my high school team could give the Transmitters a run, and I don’t care that the beat Shin Seiki in extra’s a few days ago at all.

Clearly their front office, fans, and (not the least) players would dearly love to turn the trick again in this, their last chance at Japanese-centric greatness. The front office has pushed this effort along with, among other things, selecting PEBA superstar shortstop Christian Ramey in the league’s contraction draft, and acquiring solid second baseman Toshiro Okamoto in a deal.

Ramey signed to come to Japan before the slimeball stuff ever hit the fan, but he couldn’t be more pleased. “It’s like fortune smiled on me in every way possible,” Ramey tells me before the game. “I get to play in this beautiful place, and also get to compete for the greatest championship in the world. Then, when it’s all done, it’s back to the PEBA just in time to step on the world’s stage.”

Ramey talks so much about the Neo-Tokyo Cup that I’m left to think he gets paid more every time he mentions it.

The game starts on time, the Evas sending their 2019 Sawamura award winning pitcher Yakamochi ‘Zoom Zoom’ Suitani to the hill to face Neo-Tokyo’s Tadamasa ‘Six Pack’ Hashimoto, a league star of his own, and who at 27 is already entering his sixth season in the LRS. This will be his first start for the Akira, though, as he signed a six-season extension with the Seoul franchise just before the bottom dropped out–and by selecting Six Pack in the expansion draft, Neo-Tokyo became responsible for that deal.

Suitani certainly has it all. He throws 100, and has a slider and a cutter that suggest he’s a genetic mix of Mariano Rivera and Randy Johnson from back in the day. I would still take Marcus Hancock in his youth over him, but Zoom Zoom fans don’t have anything to be ashamed of by that call.

Six Pack is a league star of his own, though, and one who at 27 is already entering his sixth season in the LRS. This will be his first start for the Akira, though, as he signed a six-season extension worth $48M with the Seoul franchise just before the bottom dropped out–and by selecting Six Pack in the expansion draft, Neo-Tokyo became responsible for that deal.

As to be expected, the game is a pitching duel.

Neo-Tokyo manages only six hits (two from Ramey), Shin Seiki four.

But the Evas play little ball in the fourth to get a run off a single, a balk, and a pair of deep sacrifice flies. Then they get a homer in the fifth from rightfielder Hiroshige Takeda. It says something that the fans cheer the movement of runners on the sacrifice flies just as heartily as they do the homer (Japan, it seems, is definitely big on personal sacrifice).

Shin Seiki wins it 2-0.

Game time: 2 hours, 24 minutes.

So, you ask, can they play with the big dogs.

That’s hard to say. But it was clear that Zoom Zoom and Six Pack could mow them down. But can Suitani keep it up with only two pitches (can he actually be a Randy Johnson?) And will Six Pack be as effective against a lineup full of Rameys? That’s a pretty tall order.

Defensively the teams were slick, and precise. Their fundamentals were sound–hitting the cut-off men, backing up plays, and making the sure plays. The fans here love glove work, and it’s clear that their Gurabukin award (the All-Leather Awards, for yu PEBAites) are revered.

On the offensive side you see enough hitters coming across the pond that you could see it work, but when you look closely you see loops in swings that would have driven Don-o crazy.

I think about that on the rail-ride home.

I think about Don-o sitting in a stadium in Japan and watching the game here.

It’s okay that he’s not responded to any of my stories. It’s okay that he’s gone. I admit here in the quiet that there are times where I thin I just dreamed him up and filled him in there. But I can’t believe that’s true. Not really. He was there, standing under that tree. I know he was. And that means that, like Ichihara sitting in the stands one last time, at least I got to see him again.

Anyway…

Can the guys in Japan play with the PEBA as it is? I don’t know. It’s going to be tough. But I do know this, Don-o, wherever he is, will be loving the act of watching it play out.